Jackson, who is running for the GOP nomination to challenge Virginia Senator Tim Kaine in November made the statement during what he billed as ”a groundbreaking speech on race in America.”

“We must reject the idea that America has ever been a racist country,” Jackson said in his speech. “It has not.”

Jackson insisted that “America has never been a racist country” because “it was actually Arab Muslims who were the first to enslave sub-Saharan Africans.”

“It was Arab Muslims who were the first to create racial ideology,” he added. “It was not Europeans who came up with racial ideology, it was Arab Muslims. It was not Europeans who started the African slave trade; the Portuguese were the first to engage in it—the first Europeans—but they learned it from them!”

Far from being ”groundbreaking, ” Jackson’s speech consisted of the kind of pseudo-history and misinformation for which he’s well known.